Storm Chances Overnight

There are two chances of rain and storms for north Texas over the next 8 hours. The first is a weak line of rain/storms moving over the Red River Valley over Wichita Falls. This line has weakened over the last hour but the winds at 850mb(around 5,000ft) is feeding warm and moist air into this line. This could keep them the line together as it moves over our western counties.

The other (and better) chance is from a large cluster of storms over western Kansas moving into Oklahoma. It is possible this line could hold together all the way to the Red River overnight. It would then move into the metro area around 5am- 6am making for a wet morning commute. The line will be in a much weaker state by the time it gets overhead; likely just moderate rain and some lighting.

Below you can see the latest run of one of our forecast models (RPM) placing the line in central Oklahoma by 2am still in route to north Texas.

With a NW flow aloft at 500mb (around 18,000ft) storms that develop in the panhandle will make a run for us over the next several days. The forecast models don’t really do a very good job on these small scale, convective-driven complexs. Storm chances greatly improve when a frontal boundary moves into our area late Monday and Tuesday. The storms will threaten our northern counties tomorrow afternoon, most of north Texas overnight into Tuesday and over a large swath of our area on Tuesday afternoon and evening.

It appears the ridge over the southwest will move overhead during the day on Wednesday. This will put us back into the hot and dry weather we had in the middle of last week. Right now it appears this pattern will hold to the end of the month for the most part. There is a chance that the ridge could break down just enough to allow rain to come up from the Gulf after next weekend.